Aaron Bushnell Bravely Burning

Praying For Peace,

  In the 3 minute video he made, while mostly walking to the Israeli embassy in Washington, Aaron explains softly, with the sincere tone of a really good math tutor, trying to help a kid with geometry, what he is about to do and why he is doing it. That 3 minute video is his contribution to our world. It is here.

​  Aaron Bushnell, 25, an active duty member of the US Air Force, self-immolated outside the Israeli embassy in Washington, DCon Sunday after stating that"I will no longer be complicit in genocide."
​  "I am an active duty member of the United States Air Force and I will no longer be complicit in genocide,"Bushnell said in video he livestreamed on Twitch."I'm about to engage in an extreme act of protest but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it's not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal."
  Aaron Bushnell then doused himself with accelerant and set himself on fire while repeatedly shouting, "Free Palestine!"

​[Loved ones of Aaron Bushnell, 25, reached out to me and gave me consent to post a blurred version of Bushnell’s protest today against genocide in Palestine.
“Aaron is the kindest, gentlest, silliest little kid in the Air Force,” said Errico, who met Bushnell in 2022.​  Talia Jane]
https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=64311

​  Why Would Anyone Kill Themselves to Stop a War? On Aaron Bushnell and Others. Colonel (USA ret.) Ann Wright ​  Six years ago in 2018, after returning from a Veterans For Peace trip to Vietnam, I wrote an article called “Why Would Anyone Kill One’s Self In an Attempt to Stop A War?”
Now, six years later, in the past three months, two people in the United States have taken or risked taking their own lives in an attempt to change U.S. policies on Palestine and call for a cease-fire and stop U.S. funding to the State of Israel that would be used to kill in the Israeli genocide of Gaza. An yet unidentified woman, wrapped in a Palestinian flag, set herself on fire in front of the Israeli consulate in Atlanta, Georgia, on December 1, 2023. Three months later authorities have yet to release the name of the woman. Her condition was unknown as of mid-December.
​  This week, on Sunday, February 25, 2024, active duty U.S. Air Force member Aaron Bushnell set himself on fire at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., while he was stating “Free Palestine and stop the genocide.” Bushnell died from his injuries.​.. ..While on a Veterans for Peace trip to Vietnam in 2014 and while on another VFP delegation in March 2018, our delegation saw the iconic photo of a well-known Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc who set himself on fire in June1963 on a busy street in Saigon to protest the Diem regime’s crackdown on Buddhists during the early days of the American war on Vietnam. That photo is seared into our collective memories... ..But, did you know that several Americans also set themselves on fire to attempt to end U.S. military actions during those turbulent war years in the 1960s?
​  I didn’t, until our VFP delegation saw the portraits displayed of five Americans who gave their lives to protest the American war on Vietnam, among other international persons who are revered in Vietnamese history, at the Vietnam-USA Friendship Society in Hanoi. Though these American peace persons have fallen into oblivion in their own nation, they are well-known martyrs in Vietnam, 50 years later... ..After seeing one particular portrait again—that of Norman Morrison—I decided to write about these Americans who were willing to end their own lives in an attempt to stop the American war on the Vietnamese people.
​  What distinguished these Americans to the Vietnamese was that, as American soldiers were killing Vietnamese, there were American citizens who ended their own lives in order to try to bring the terror of invasion and occupation for Vietnamese citizens to the American public through the horror of their own deaths… ..The first person in the United States to die of self-immolation in opposition to the war on Vietnam was 82-year-old Quaker Alice Herz who lived in Detroit, Michigan. She set herself on fire on a Detroit street on March 16, 1965. Before she died of her burns 10 days later, Alice said she set herself on fire to protest “the arms race and a president using his high office to wipe out small nations.”
​  Six months later on November 2, 1965, Norman Morrison, a 31-year-old Quaker from Baltimore, a father of three young children, died of self-immolation at the Pentagon. Morrison felt that traditional protests against the war had done little to end the war and decided that setting himself on fire at the Pentagon might mobilize enough people to force the United States government to abandon its involvement in Vietnam. Morrison’s choice to self-immolate was particularly symbolic in that it followed President Lyndon Johnson’s controversial decision to authorize the use of napalm in Vietnam, a burning gel that sticks to the skin and melts the flesh.

​  Apparently, unbeknownst to Morrison, he chose to set himself on fire beneath the Pentagon window of then-Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.

​  Thirty years later in his 1995 memoir, In Retrospect: The Tragedy in Lessons of Vietnam, McNamara remembered Morrison’s death:
​  "Antiwar protests had been sporadic and limited up to this time and had not compelled attention. Then came the afternoon of November 2, 1965. At twilight that day, a young Quaker named Norman R. Morrison, father of three and an officer of the Stony Run Friends Meeting in Baltimore, burned himself to death within 40 feet of my Pentagon window. Morrison’s death was a tragedy not only for his family but also for me in the country. It was an outcry against the killing that was destroying the lives of so many Vietnamese and American youth.
​  I reacted to the horror of his action by bottling up my emotions and avoided talking about them with anyone—even with my family. I knew (his wife) Marge and our three children shared many of Morrison’s feelings about the war. And I believed I understood and shared some of his thoughts. The episode created tension at home that only deepened as the criticism of the war continued to grow.​" ​  Before his memoir In Retrospect was published, in a 1992 article in Newsweek, McNamara had listed people or events that had had an impact on his questioning of the war. One of those events, McNamara identified as “the death of a young Quaker.”​...

..Every Vietnamese school child learns a song and poem written by Vietnamese poet Tố Hữu called “Emily, My Child” dedicated to the young daughter that Morrison was holding only moments before he set himself on fire at the Pentagon. The poem reminds Emily that her father died because he felt he had to object in the most visible way to the deaths of Vietnamese children at the hands of the United States government...
​..One week after Norman Morrison’s death, Roger LaPorte, 22, a Catholic Worker, became the third war protester to take his own life. He died of burns suffered through self-immolation on November 9, 1965 on the United Nations Plaza in New York City. He left a note that read, “I am against war, all wars. I did this as a religious act.”​... ..In the case of U.S. Air Force Senior Airman Aaron Bushnell, Aaron told the world his reason: "I do not want to be complacent in the genocide of Gaza! Free Palestine!." His sentiments are echoed by hundreds of millions around the world who recognize the horrific Israeli genocide of Gaza. For U.S. citizens, it is our duty to keep pressure on the Biden administration to stop funding Israel's genocide of Gaza and violence in the West Bank. https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/kill-selves-to-stop-war

  ​Caitlin Johnstone in Oz watched Aaron's video, and the people rushing to help and put out the fire which engulfed him, and the one weird guy who rushed in with an automatic handgun, which he trained on the collapsed sacrificial lamb, unflinchingly. (Who was that guy?  -  Newsweek says he was Secret Service.)   The Most American Thing That Has Ever Happened ​  You simply cannot fit more America into a single incident than a man dying a horrifying death in protest of war crimes while a first responder screams at cops to stop pointing their guns at him and go get fire extinguishers. If you were to pick a single moment in history to sum up the essence and expression of the US empire, that would be it.

The Most American Thing That Has Ever Happened

​  Netanyahu Says Hostage Deal Will Only Delay Attack on Rafah ​  Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explained that if Tel Aviv agrees to a new hostage deal with Hamas, it will only “delay” the Israeli attack on Rafah. International aid organizations have warned that an attack on the city of 1.5 million will be devastating to the civilian population of Gaza.
​  On Friday, the US, Egypt, and Qatar presented a new hostage deal that would see the release of 40 Israeli captives in exchange for a six-week pause in fighting. The deal was negotiated without the input of Tel Aviv and Hamas. https://news.antiwar.com/2024/02/25/netanyahu-says-hostage-deal-will-only-delay-attack-on-rafah/

​  Netanyahu is accomplishing his genocide.
Starvation in Gaza: 'If we stay like this for another week, we will die en masse'   The famine in northern Gaza, caused by Israel's strangling siege, has reached extreme levels, Palestinian residents there have told Middle East Eye. There have been several reports of people dying from malnutrition, including infants.​ Life for over half a million people there now revolves around a single task every day: finding something to eat. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/starvation-gaza-if-we-stay-another-week-we-will-die-en-masse

​  Israel Hinders Humanitarian Assistance in Gaza By Delaying Visas for Aid Workers ​  The Israeli outlet reports that as well as not approving new visas, it is refusing to extend visas for aid workers already in Gaza and the West Bank. The lack of workers has disrupted the activities of several aid organizations operating in the Strip.
​  Tel Aviv has taken several steps to block and slow aid transfers to Gaza. Israel has blocked US-funded flour from reaching Gaza, Tel Aviv has established an inspection regime that prevents live-saving aid from entering the Strip, and Israeli forces have targeted the Gazan police force that helps secure aid as it is distributed in the besieged enclave.
​  The Israeli onslaught in Gaza has created a humanitarian crisis that American officials have compared to the horrific situation that once plagued Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu. Children in Gaza have starved to death, including a two-month-old boy who died on Friday. https://news.antiwar.com/2024/02/25/israel-hinders-humanitarian-assistance-in-gaza-by-delaying-visas-for-aid-workers/

​  US Intel Has ‘Low Confidence’ in Israeli Claim a Dozen UN Staff Participated in Hamas Attack​ ​ [This shows deep-state policy-disagreement.]
The (CIA mouthpiece) Washington Post claims to have independently verified that a single UNRWA employee took part in the October 7 attack on Israel ​  Tel Aviv released a summary of its intelligence for the assertions to several news outlets. After reviewing the Israeli dossier, multiple outlets reported that Israel had provided no evidence to back the claims that members of UNRWA are aligned with Hamas.
​  Still, Washington and several other top donors to UNRWA backed Tel Aviv’s allegations and cut funding to the agency. Secretary of State Antony Blinken described the claims as “highly, highly credible.” https://news.antiwar.com/2024/02/23/us-intel-has-low-confidence-in-israeli-claim-a-dozen-un-staff-participated-in-hamas-attack/

​  Israel Escalates Demolitions of Palestinians’ Homes in Occupied East Jerusalem
Israeli authorities recently bulldozed the home of a prominent Palestinian human rights activist and elected spokesperson of the Silwan district https://news.antiwar.com/2024/02/25/israel-escalates-demolitions-of-palestinians-homes-in-occupied-east-jerusalem/

  ​Gilbert Doctorow,  Houthis attack underwater communications cables in the Red Sea ​  As a result of an attack by Houthis in the Red Sea, four underwater cables connecting Europe with Asia have been damaged, leading to serious interruptions in the work of internet communications, according to the media outlet Vzglyad.ru
​  The main damage is felt in the countries of the Persian Gulf and India, according to Ura.ru per a message of the newspaper Globe to Vzglyad.ru
In this material it is noted that repairs to the cables will take at least eight weeks – Vechernaya Moskva.​   End quote
​  I would wager a guess that the technical and material support for this Houthi attack comes from Russia which is now finally via proxy war beginning to take its revenge on Western powers for the infrastructure terrorism they practiced in bombing the Nord Stream I pipelines. https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2024/02/27/news-flash-houthis-attack-underwater-communications-cables-in-the-red-sea/

​  Denmark Drops Probe Into Nord Stream Gas Pipeline Sabotage An investigation launched by the Swedish authorities concluded that the leaks were the result of detonations, likely the result of “serious sabotage”.
​  But earlier this month, Sweden’s authorities concluded a preliminary investigation into the Nord Stream blasts but found they lacked jurisdiction to continue, as the incident occurred in international waters and involved no Swedish nationals. Therefore, Sweden ended the probe in early February. ​  Denmark also ended its investigation on Monday, with the Copenhagen police saying in a statement that “The joint investigation conducted by the Copenhagen Police and the​..Danish Security and Intelligence Services (PET) into the Nord Stream explosions has been concluded.”...“The investigation has led the authorities to conclude that there was deliberate sabotage of the gas pipelines. However, the assessment is that there is not the sufficient grounds to pursue a criminal case in Denmark,” the police said.
​  Apart from Denmark and Sweden, Germany has also investigated the Nord Stream blasts, but Berlin hasn’t concluded its own investigation into the sabotage. A spokesperson for the government told Reuters earlier in February that Germany was still interested in solving the case. https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Denmark-Drops-Probe-Into-Nord-Stream-Gas-Pipeline-Sabotage.html

​  Chinese refiners have been snapping up cargoes of Russia’s Far East Sokol grade oil that have been stranded off the coast of India due to Western sanctions and thus undeliverable, Bloomberg has reported, citing vessel-tracking data by Kpler. https://www.rt.com/business/592874-china-russian-oil-india-sanctions/

​  Those "decisive months" appear to have been December 2023 through February 2024. Ukraine conflict may be decided in ‘months’ – Borrell​,  Kiev’s fate depends on continued Western funding, the EU’s top diplomat has warned https://www.rt.com/news/593153-borrell-ukraine-conflict-outcome/

​  Military Summary points out that Russian forces are applying constant pressure along the 1200 km line of combat with Ukraine, tying down Ukrainian forces, and preparing to take 5-6 Ukrainian strongholds at once, which will make reinforcement needs so high that Ukrainian lines will remain broadly exhausted and inadequate. Russians will then be able to seize initiative where it is most favorable to them, and advance rapidly.  

  Ukrainians Are Trapped | Russians Storm Several Cities At The Same Time. Military Summary 2024.02.27

This is harder for me to look at than Aaron's self-immolation, somehow. Please Stop, already, Joe! Biden Botches Lincoln Quote, Brands Xi Leader of Russia, Gets Confused Without Handler https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2024/02/25/biden-governors-black-tie-event-n2170555

​  Biden Talks Up Gaza Ceasefire By "End Of The Weekend" Even As Israeli Officials Downplay​   Biden while in an ice cream shop in New York with Seth Meyers was asked by a reporter when he thought a ceasefire could begin, to which he answered he hoped a truce would be implemented within days. "Well, I hope by the beginning of the weekend, by the end of the weekend," he said.
​  And that's when he even additionally offered Monday as the day the warring sides will reach a ceasefire. "My national security adviser tells me that we’re close. We’re close. We’re not done yet. My hope is, by next Monday, we’ll have a ceasefire." https://www.zerohedge.com/political/biden-talks-gaza-ceasefire-end-weekend-evan-israeli-officials-downplay

​  Kyle Young, on his farm near the Mexican border, DHS, DACA, Cloward/Piven and Fascism cyber attacks ​  I’m not going to point any fingers because I’m not sure what’s going on. I’ll just say that, because the blockage has come up since I began writing about those who benefit from the corrupt Border Industrial Complex , it smells fishy.
​  What all of this says to me is that no one is safe from cyber attack. When the time comes, any electronically dependent service can be shut down at will by the powers that shouldn’t be.​..

..This smallish Catholic non-profit was given 24 hours to provide the documents required. It refused to do so. Annunciation House then sued the State, claiming it needed more time. Texas then sued Annunciation House for failure to comply.​ Paxton has accused the charity of human trafficking and serving as a drug stash house...
..What has Annunciation House been doing in El Paso for nearly 50 years?​ Just as a reminder, El Paso sits right on the border with Mexico and has a very long, very violent cartel history.​..

..This map shows the 100 mile wide Constitutional Free Zone that encompasses the US. This is what the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) arbitrarily claims as it’s jurisdiction. The CBP claims that people living inside this zone have to forfeit Constitutional rights. In other words, they can come onto your property or into your home without a search warrant. I know this is the case because it has happened to me and others I know in the tiny community eleven miles from the border.
​  Note that the entirety of the Hawaiian Islands falls under this jurisdiction.
This makes CBP the largest law enforcement agency the country. As the map shows, nearly two thirds of Americans come under its purview.​.. ..The massive expansion of government known as DHS, ostensibly created by Bush to make the US more secure, has done the opposite. It set the stage for many more domino’s to fall. With every expansion of government comes an equal or greater expansion of taxpayer funds going to corporate entities that benefit from the new programs that government expansion creates.
​  As Julian Assange said, “The job of government is to take money from the people and give it to corporations.”​...

..Professors at the Columbia University School of Social Work, Cloward and Piven outlined their strategy in a May 1966 article in The Nation - "The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty”. Sociologists and political activists, Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven put their heads together and hatched a plan to tear down US society. Their idea was that this would then lead to forced socialism with everyone being enrolled in a Federally funded, guaranteed annual income.​.. ​..Regarding the idea that everyone would be on a guaranteed annual income…​ "would produce bureaucratic disruption in welfare agencies and fiscal disruption in local and state governments" that would: "...deepen existing divisions among elements in the big-city Democratic coalition: the remaining white middle class, the working-class ethnic groups and the growing minority poor. To avoid a further weakening of that historic coalition, a national Democratic administration would be constrained to advance a federal solution to poverty that would override local welfare failures, local class and racial conflicts and local revenue dilemmas."...

dhs, daca, cloward/piven and fascism

​  Governments Must Reject New Amendments to International Health Regulations  ​  The WHO, most likely with the complicity of your government, is pushing through a set of amendments to international pandemic laws that will put your livelihood and liberties at the mercy of a WHO-appointed “expert committee” whose advice during a pandemic or other “public health emergency” will supersede that of your own government.   Proposed amendments to International Health Regulations (IHR) subordinate State authorities to the WHO as “the guidance and coordinating authority” during an international public health emergency. But the WHO is the very last organisation we should be ceding power to over international health emergencies. This is an organisation that has already shown its regressive, inhumane, and anti-scientific colours during and after the Covid pandemic, including failing to warn citizens about the incompleteness of safety data for mRNA vaccines, obstinately recommending community masking with very limited scientific evidence, warmly praising China’s cruel and draconian lockdowns, and enthusiastically supporting a global bio-surveillance regime modelled on the European Union’s digital Covid certificate.​.. ..It is often pointed out that the amendments to the International Health Regulations would not technically remove the sovereignty of national governments. But that completely misses the main point of the IHR, which is to legally bind States to follow the advice of the World Health Organisation during an international public health emergency as determined by the WHO, and to integrate national pandemic responses into an international health bureaucracy. https://brownstone.org/articles/governments-must-reject-new-amendments-to-international-health-regulations/

​  Australians Abandon Failed mRNA Covid Shots​  [Alternate title: "98.5% of Australians already slow-poisoned".]​   Just 1.7 million, or 8.5% of Australia’s 20.1 million adults have had a Covid booster in the past six months, according to the latest Australian Government update (as at 7 February). In contrast, 18.1 million, or 90% had at least one vaccination previously, but have not kept up-to-date.
​  An estimated 302,000 (1.5%) of Australian adults remain unvaccinated, although this number may be closer to half a million according to data aggregator site Covidlive.com.au. https://brownstone.org/articles/australians-abandon-failed-mrna-covid-shots/

​  The Ethical Skeptic explains in detail the complete and undisguised fraud in the state-level entry of a "cause of death" for a family member who got colon cancer following COVID vaccination. All real diagnoses were omitted. She did not have "Alzheimer’s" at all.   A Case Study in Covid-19 Vaccine Related Death Certificate Fraud https://theethicalskeptic.com/2024/02/26/a-case-study-in-covid-19-vaccine-related-death-certificate-fraud/

​  Study Finds Hearing And Balance Disorders Among COVID-19 Vaccinated “Our study found an increased relative incidence of vertigo in the 42 days following mRNA vaccines, and an increased relative incidence of tinnitus in the 42 days following both Vaxzevria adenovirus vector and mRNA vaccines,” researchers wrote.
​  “We are the first to confirm this increased relative incidence of tinnitus and vertigo post COVID-19 vaccines,“ they stated. https://www.zerohedge.com/political/study-finds-hearing-and-balance-disorders-among-covid-19-vaccinated

​  Ukraine's Top Spy Chief Says Navalny Died From Blood Clot, Rejects 'Murder' Narrative​  ​[Nobody can say if this guy was COVID-vaccinated or not.]   Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, chief of the Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR), bluntly stated it to a group of journalists on Sunday. "I may disappoint you, but as far as we know, he indeed died as a result of a blood clot. And this has been more or less confirmed," Budanov stated.  "This wasn't sourced from the internet, but, unfortunately, natural [causes]," he added in the remarks which were also caught on video...
..Navalny was supposedly very close to being released amid secret talks involving the US and Germany:​ 
​  Alexey Navalny had been close to release in a prisoner exchange with the US and Germany shortly before his death in an Arctic prison, a top aide to the Russian opposition leader said.​ "Navalny was supposed to be freed in the coming days," Maria Pevchikh said in a video statement posted Monday. Russian President Vladimir Putin was offered an assassin imprisoned in Germany in exchange for Navalny and two US citizens, she said.
​  Moscow has long been seeking to gain the freedom of Vadim Krasikov, who is currently serving a life sentence in Germany for the 2019 assassination of a former Chechen rebel in a Berlin park. Krasikov is widely believed to be part of Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB. https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/ukraines-top-spy-chief-says-navalny-died-blood-clot-rejects-murder-narrative

​  Mothers of 2 Girls Who Died After Gardasil HPV Vaccine Sue Merck
The mothers of 10-year-old Isabella Zuggi and 14-year-old Sydney Figueroa filed wrongful death lawsuits against Merck, alleging the company knowingly failed to warn the public and medical providers about the risk of injury or death from its Gardasil human papillomavirus vaccine. https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/sydney-figueroa-isabella-zuggi-hpv-vaccine-lawsuits-deaths/

​  Plaintiffs Ask Judge to Take Swift Action as Landmark Fluoride Trial Wraps Up
A landmark trial that could determine the future of water fluoridation in the U.S. ended Tuesday with attorneys for the environmental groups and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency responding to questions from federal Judge Edward Chen. ​  During the trial, top scientific experts who advised the EPA on understanding and setting hazard levels for other major environmental toxins and who conducted gold-standard “cohort” studies on the link between fluoride and low IQ in children testified for the plaintiffs.
​  They explained the NTP’s findings and presented evidence from their own research showing neurotoxic risks — particularly to pregnant women, formula-fed infants and children — posed by water fluoridation.
​  EPA witnesses conceded fluoride does have neurotoxic effects at relatively low levels, but countered that the risk assessment process under TSCA is highly complex and there is too much uncertainty in the data on fluoride’s toxicity at current levels of water fluoridation to do a proper risk assessment and regulate the chemical.
​  It is now up to Chen to weigh the evidence and determine if water fluoridation presents an “unreasonable risk” to human health, which would compel the EPA to create a rule regulating or banning water fluoridation in the U.S. https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/landmark-fluoride-trial-final-day-us-water-fluoridation-future/

​Mother Nature's Son (pictured pushing gas powered lawnmower recently)